Transcultural validation of the “revised sport motivation scale” (SMS‐II) in Arabic language: Exploratory study on motivation in sport for a sample of Tunisian Athletes

Background Sports performance is the result of an interaction of several variables, such as physical, technical, and psychological. The ability of athletes to use motivation, is an important predictor to achieve high performance in sport. SMS‐II comprised 18 elements to measure six behavioral control factors. Aim This study aims to validate an Arabic version of the revised sports motivation scale‐II (SMS‐II) and measure the psychometric properties of factorial structure, internal reliability, construct validity, and sensitivity. Methods A total of 780 athletes from different disciplines (432 men, 348 women; mean age = 18.97 years) participated in this study. Athletes voluntarily responded to the version of SMS‐II. Factorial validity was established by principal component analysis. Both exploratory (EFA; N = 390; males: 52.6%; females: 47.4%; [13–18] = 172; [19–30] = 218) and confirmatory (CFA; N = 390; males: 58.2%; females: 41.8%; [13–18] = 247; [19–30] = 143) analyses were examined. Results The 18 SMS-II items revealed perfect reliability (McDonald’s omega = 0.841, Cronbach’s α = 0.858, Gutmann’s λ6 = 0.952) and good temporal stability (ICC = 0.960, 95% CI = 0.915–0.980; r = 0.935, 95% CI = 0.889–0.963 at p < 0.001) over 4-week period. The CFA adjustment indices were perfect. Conclusion The results tended to clarify all indices as perfect adjustments to the theoretical model, ensuring the confirmation of factor structure and construction validity regarding the Tunisian sports workforce.

• However, the introduction is extensive, introducing relevant and irrelevant information regarding the instrument.Plenty of history was emphasized instead of emphasizing the importance of the instrument itself and its usefulness in addressing the aspects it was designed to address.Therefore, the introduction can be more precise to address and build the problem of the study.Examples would be a brief background of the instrument (not significant, but brief), then why this instrument is essential in general, and why it is crucial in specific; reporting some of the studies that used it with some results to emphasize its importance, what kind of new knowledge with this aid the end-user when translated and how it can be used in practice.
• References are missing in the introduction.
• The whole sentence should precede the first time an abbreviation appears in the text.
• Sentences should not start with abbreviations. Methods: • Line 145: is the sample adequate to validate the study?Suggest the authors look at: https://www.mdpi.com/862272;sample size estimation.• Line 156: I would suggest removing the history and targeting the instrument.What does the instrument consist of?Is the original instrument attached to this manuscript with items in the same order they were distributed?Pointing at the instrument is highly important.• Line 185: how was the instrument distributed?Penn and paper?Electronic?What kind of software was used?How? • Line 192: before the data collection or before the beginning of analysis?• Line 193: how was the parents' permission obtained?• Line 285-300 could be changed with the rotational matrix produced by the PCA, and the eigenvalue could be reported with its graph to show the loadings of the items.• Line 327: why not present the solutions as they were produced by the software instead of grouping them?
Line 361 (discussion): The discussion should be systemized to address the study's intention (i.e., validating the translated version of SMS-II).
It should be presented in the same order as it was tested.1-Discuss the methodology used to address the problem.2-discuss the instrument's quality.
3-discuss the Composite scores and their meaning.4-discuss EFA.5-DISCUSS CFA 6-discuss Sensitivity analysis in a systamatic fasion.
Finally and in the discussion, I would not compare to other instruments as this is not the purpose of this study.Instead, I would compare the other study's findings using the same instrument.
Mainly those studies that have validated the instrument in different languages.

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Line 195: what do the authors mean by The raw data obtained by the participants were analyzed to ensure maximum confidentiality?line 195-197 should be rewritten with clarity in mind.•Line 204-208: is this not part of the PCA? what was the cutoff for a good fit?Where was the goodness of fit measured?How? (model fit)?• Line 210-211: did the authors report the PCA as it was produced from the analysis?I did not see that in the results.The entire table should be presented as the software produced it.Line 244: what doe the instrument quality have to do with the descriptive statistics of the participants?• Line 258-: how relevant is this analysis to the purpose of this study?Does this mean that the instrument does not measure change from time to time? what is the difference between this analysis and the KMO and Bartlett sphericity test?what is the purpose of this study?was it to measure if participants answered similarly from one time to another time, or to validate a translated questionnaire?line 258-276 is not relevant to this study.• Line 277-281: what is the purpose of line 277-281?does this indicate that the dimensions are related?Ok, why is it important?